BIRD OF THE WEEK NUMBER 9
I’iwi or Hawaiian Scarlet Honeycreeper
DAVID KUHN HAS COLLECTED bird songs in Kaua’i for thirty years. He does not have a professor’s salary, just the day-to-day devotion of a practiced field biologist. He has the no-nonsense manner of a boat captain and drives a banged-up 4WD station wagon muddied with red soil. Four years ago, he agreed to guide my wife, her sister, and me through the Alaka’i Wilderness Preserve, and early one February morning we snaked our way up Waimea Canyon to meet him in a state park lot. There, he showed us a laminated page depicting ten of the remaining Hawaiian native birds, eight of them endemic, meaning only seen in Kaua’i. All are confined to the Alaka’i, which is elevated enough and cold enough to discourage the mosquitoes that came to the island in the watery hulls of trading boats. Avian malaria is the leading cause of decline among native Hawaiian birds and the warming climate is worrisome. Two species last seen in the Alaka’i were declared extinct two years ago. “We’ll be lucky to see one,” David said. “We’ll take my car.”
THE ROAD TO ALAKA’I has potholes the depth of wheels. The “swamp,” as it’s called, is a plateau adjacent to Mt. Wai’ale’ale, which averages 373 inches of rain per year. At the beginning of the wilderness trail, much of it a boardwalk built by the state, the shrubs reminded me of the Mendocino’s dwarf forest, whose porous alkaline soil stunts the trees’ growth. That area gave way to a larger forest and at its edge, David pointed quietly to a tree where a scarlet bird, an ‘Apapane, was feasting on a flowering tree, its favorite, the ‘ohi’a. Though fifty feet from the tree, I was able to manage a few shots and already counted myself lucky.
AFTER A SHORT WALK through the forest, where we heard but did not see other birds, we settled into a small clearing and, at our guide’s direction, waited. We ate snacks and waited some more. Just as we were debating whether to move on, a bird appeared at the edge of the clearing. (I can’t count the number of times I’ve encountered birds just as I was about to give up hope.) The endemic Kaua’i ‘elepaio is a monarch flycatcher with a rust-colored breast that has shown a resistance to malaria and has made a small comeback in the Alaka’i in recent years. With small steps, we followed the flycatcher back towards the trail, lost it, and then heard and saw a yellow-green bird circling the trunk of a tree. This, we learned, was also an endemic bird, one of the honeycreepers, the ‘Amakihi. I took pictures until it flew off and at that point, more than satisfied with our day in the swamp, we started back down the trail towards the car. It was then that the bird above, the I’iwi, suddenly appeared on a branch just a few yards away. The Hawaiian nobility famously prized the feathers of this scarlet honeycreeper for their royal coats and helmets, and the birds often appeared in island myth and songs. Though the filtered forest light was a bit difficult to work around, this I’iwi generously posed for several minutes. With that we’d seen a total of four of the rare birds and, David said, heard a fifth. When I later sent the pictures to him, he wrote, “Warms the very cockles, mahalo. Both your `I`iwi and `Apapane help me be glad to be alive.” Which of course warmed my heart’s cockles.
Nikon D500, 300mm, 1/500, f8, ISO 450